


Shame Those Stars

by Skinandpit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Soulmate AU, Endverse!Castiel] Dean Winchester doesn't have a soulmate. Neither does Castiel, the cashier at the bakery down the street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shame Those Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Destiel Advent Calender, day 22.

Right now, Dean’s problem with Christmas is all the damn romcoms. 

It’s the season for love, or whatever — people like having something sweet and warm to watch when the snow’s coming down, something to remind them that there’s good in the world even after all the trees have died. Dean gets it. He likes them, too. He watches them when Sam is asleep, mostly, not wanting his brother to notice and laugh at him. It feels stupid and unnecessarily furtive, as if he were doing something perverse, but that’s alright.

He microwaves popcorn and turns the volume down low. He laughs at the funny bits. He feels warm and fuzzy when people’s buzzers go off, when they take that staggering step backwards and lift their eyes to meet their soulmates. It’s an old story and a good one.

Sometimes he feels a little achy, just behind his ribcage, and he has the uncomfortable sneaking suspicion that it’s this, far more than any concerns about aspirations being cast on his manliness, that keeps him from inviting Sam down to watch with him.

#

Dean’s timer isn’t broken, exactly. It’s just, well, it just doesn’t have any numbers on it. He usually keeps a thick cuff over it, so that no one will see.

There are any number of possible reasons for his inactive tfimer, ranging from the mundane to the unconscionably horrible. He might just be one of those people born without a soulmate — it’s been known to happen, and it’s not nearly as rare as people often make it out to be. Their parents could have decided not to install the timer, or they could have decided to take it out when they got older.

There’s no point agonizing over it. Look at Sam — he found his match early on, only seventeen and his first year of college. Now he’s twenty-five and pretty happy seeing this completely different girl he met at a bar, Lindsey, who still hasn’t found her match but eventually got tired of waiting. Soulmates are important, no one’s ever going to deny that, but they aren’t a guarantee of anything. 

Still. It would be _nice_ to have a Hollywood romance. It’s cheap and cheesy but he wants to settle.

He spends a lot of time in this stupid diner three blocks from his house, which sells decent sandwiches and plays soft jazz all day long. If Sam ever asks, he’s going to say it’s because of their pie, but if he’s being completely honest with himself, it’s because the man who works in there on Thursdays hasn’t got any numbers on his timer, ether.

He doesn’t hide it like Dean does. He wears prayer beads on the wrist where red numbers should be flashing, and they tap ever so slightly against the plastic when he moves. His nametag says Castiel, which sounds not like music but like the sound instruments make when you put them down.  
He moves with languid grace and has eyes blue as robin’s eggs. His mouth is always full of snide laughter.

Dean tries not to stare. He’s always staring. 

#

“Ah,” Castiel says, when Dean walks through the door, the little dinky bell ringing as he passes. “It’s our fearless leader. Coffee? Black? Slice of breakfast pie?”

Dean isn’t entirely certain why Castiel calls him this. It’s probably related to a joke he made early on, about trying to organize the people in the auto shop where he works. Dean can’t tell if he means it in a friendly way or a nasty one. When he leans over the counter, a little too far to be entirely professional, he smells like incense.

“Uh,” he says. “Thanks. Cherry?”

“It’s nine AM,” Castiel tells him, sing-song, then rings him up anyway.

He’s wearing a Christmas sweater today, bright red with huge white stars on it. It’s very cute. It’s a bit of a divergence from the rough hippy clothes he usually wears — heavy organic cottons, cuts that hang a little heavy around the shoulders — but Dean supposes that everyone deserves a little seasonal dress-up.

Dean hands over his cash. “That’s all right with me, man.” 

Castiel laughs.

#

As Dean is heading out the next week, Sam comes loping up behind him without a word and takes his coat out of the closet. Dean turns to stare at him. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Breakfast?” Sam says. “You’re always going out to this place. I want to see what it’s like. We can pick up a tree afterwards.”

“We’re getting a tree?” Dean says.

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Dean. It’s Christmas. You’re the one who always cares about this stuff.”

“Exactly! You don’t!” Dean says. Sam’s coat, he notices, isn’t in any way appropriate for the weather — it’s thin and ragged and he hasn’t even got a sweater on underneath. One of these days, Dean’s brother is going to freeze solid.

“Lindsey’s going to join us this year,” Sam says, and Dean groans. “What?” 

“You didn’t even ask — you know what, forget it.”

Sam is staring at him, this look on his face like Dean is being ridiculous, so Dean rolls his eyes and puts on his own coat. “Fine,” he says. “Fine, whatever, come to my breakfast place and we’ll get a stupid tree when we’re done.”

“You’re grumpy today,” Sam says, and Dean goes, “Yeah, thanks, poindexter.”

#  
Castiel is there, of course — Thursdays are his day, which is pretty much why Dean is going in the first place. “Hello!” he chirrups, then spots Sam and grins. “There’s the brother, the Stanford genius.”

“Uh,” says Sam. “Yeah.” His shoulders are dusted with snow but he isn’t shivering. 

Dean watches Sam’s eyes settle on Castiel’s blank timer. It’s a habit that a lot of people have, Dean included — you want to see how close people are to eternal bliss. It’s not polite, but it’s a social transgression most people are willing to forgive.

Sam stills for a second, and Castiel must see, because he stiffens for a moment before grins even wider. He gets even more languid, which Dean did not realize was possible. His limbs droop as if the bones had fallen out of them. He tilts his arm so that the blackness of the screen is even more visible.

No, Dean wants to tell him, that’s not what’s happening, my brother’s not judging you, he’s just putting together the mystery of why I’m here all the time — but there’s no way to say that without coming out. From experience, he knows that Castiel must be pretty used to this kind of thing. Honestly, that makes it worse, not better. 

“Coffee? Pie? What’s your brother looking for? 

Sam — who, to his credit, had stopped staring almost immediately — turns to Dean and hisses in what’s probably supposed to be an undertone but is in fact a perfectly normal speaking volume. _“You’re eating pie for breakfast?”_

“Yeah, kiddo, thanks.” He turns to Castiel. “Something big. Really sweet. Sam can eat it too, if he wants breakfast. And uh, two coffees. Carmel in his. Lots of whipped cream.” 

_“Dean,”_ says Sam, and Dean says, “Jesus fucking Christ,” which makes Sam shut up and look twice as pissed.

Castiel is smiling when he types in the order.

#

They sit at a little table in the back. The bakery isn’t really meant for sitting — it’s more of a take-your-bread-and-go place, which also happens to serve coffee, but there are three tiny tables with spindly black legs an dollhouse chairs crammed in the back. Sam more or less engulfs them.

“So,” Sam says. 

“What,” Dean says back. He’s drinking the caramel monstrosity he ordered for Sam. It’s sort of saccharine and disgusting, but Cas put crushed candy cane on it without asking. He likes it. The whole thing came in at just over seven dollars, which is considerably more than Dean is comfortable with paying, but theoretically a good deal for what they’ve ordered.  
Sam stares pointedly at Dean’s wrist. Dean puts it under the table.

He leans forwards. “What,” he hisses. “I’m just supposed to ask him out because we’re both got blank timers? We’re not interchangeable, Sammy.” 

“No!” Sam says, looking around as if someone might have heard and started judging him, then leans towards Dean himself. “No, I think you should consider asking him out because neither of you have timers _and_ because you’ve been coming here in secret every Thursday to moon at him!”

“I’m not — is that honestly the word you’re going to go with?” 

Sam does not rise to the bait. He looks at Dean with steady, serious eyes. Sometimes he reminds Dean of one of those dogs with locking jaws, the ones you have to pry off with a crowbar if you want to escape.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “Fine,” he says. “Whatever,” he finishes.

#

They get the tree from the hardware store. Dean spends a half hour picking it out and Sam stares at him the whole time, obviously waiting for some kind of declaration of love. 

“Oh my god!” Dean says, finally, and chooses the ugliest possible tree in revenge. 

The radio is playing some sappy goddamn song about numbers coming together and sparks and gooey crap. He just wants to get out of there. 

When they get home and put Dean’s ugly little misfit tree up, all its random brown branches on full display, their radio is playing the exact same song. Dean makes Sam turn it off and slumps down in the chair in front of the tree until Sam gets freaked out by his silence and retreats to his room.

The tree looks pretty sad and weird. 

“You and me both, buddy,” Dean tells it. 

#

Sam comes out of his room, bleary eyed and with his hair all a mess, when Dean is watching last year’s Dr. Sexy’s Christmas special. It’s about a woman whose timer gets damaged in an accident. She’s worried she’ll never find her loved one, but at the last moment, on Christmas eve, just as the snow starts to fall, a man whose tonsils have been removed is wheeled into her hospital room and his timer goes nuts.

The nurses are watching this beautiful union with warmth and wetness in their eyes when Sam comes in.

“Oh my god,” he says. “Dean.” 

“What?” says Dean.” 

“Ask him out,” says Sam. “Please.”

“I’m watching TV!” Dean says. “It’s three AM, I can’t call him up now and go, _oh uh hey, I don’t normally do this, but —_ “ 

“On Thursday,” Sam says. “When you go into the bakery. For breakfast. Which you have apparently been doing. Every Thursday. For the past four months.” 

“It’s a good place for breakfast,” Dean says. 

“The coffee tasted like turpentine,” Sam tells him. “He gave you the wrong flavour of pie.” 

Deans shrugs. 

“Move over,” Sam says, so Dean shuffles to the side and Sam climbs in behind him, his huge smelly body taking over about half the couch. It’s not half bad. Dean settles down next to his little brother. 

“What’s happening?” Sam asks.

“True love,” Dean tells him. 

“Are you crying?” And Dean shoves Sam’s shoulder so hard that he laughs.

“True love, Sammy,” Dean repeats, and Sam goes, “Yeah, okay.”

#

So, fine, Dean shows up on Thursday with the intention of getting himself some untimed, un-fated-by-the-stars loving.

Castiel is not there. 

Instead, there is a nervous looking man with a thick beard and fidgety hands standing behind the register, wiping down the counter with about fifteen times more force than is truly necessary. Dean goes up to him with his heart in his throat. 

It’s not _fair_ , he thinks. This kind of crap doesn’t happen to soulmates. They show up at the eleventh hour, run into each other by coincidence, drop their books in sweet clumsy harmony all over each other’s feet and bonk heads on the way down to get them. When they look at each other for the first time, winter’s first snow begins to fall. Clouds part. They are fated and it’s not fair for everyone else, the people who don’t get this sweet magic, people who are never going to get Hollywood. You work up your nerve, finally, and instead of the whole world knitting itself together like it’s supposed to, you find your imperfect match missing. Fired, probably, he guesses, for screwing up orders or showing up to work high.

“Where’s Castiel?” he says, he says. His mouth feels dry.

The man looks up. _Chuck!_ his nameplate says, with an exclamation mark. Dean recognizes Castiel’s handwriting. 

“What?” says the man.

“He get fired or something?” Dean says, feeling like his world is falling. 

“What?” says the man again. “Oh, no. Cas isn’t going anywhere. I mean. Uh. He is, in a manner of speaking, he’s going to Monday. Switched because of, uh, because of a scheduling error. Or something.” 

“Oh,” says Dean. 

“Hey,” says the man. “You’re Dean? Cas said, you know there was a guy who always came in on Thursday mornings. Said he’d miss you.” 

“Huh,” says Dean.

Chuck smiles at him, politely. 

“Oh,” says Dean again, remembering what he’s supposed to be here for. “Coffee,” he says. “Black. And, um, apple. Pie.”

“Eleven fifteen,” says Chuck, which is how Dean realizes for the first time that Castiel has been giving him free coffee for four solid months. 

#

He agonizes about it for a week, thinking about what he’s going to say and how he’s going to say it. He doesn’t practise in the mirror, because that seems like too much of a cliché, but he does whisper his lines to himself in the shower. _Hey,_ he says. _Hey, you want to … Hey, I don’t normally … Hey, so I noticed we’re both the same kind of freak …_

On Monday, Dean walks into the bakery without the cuff that hides his timer on. 

It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but it is. It feels like the whole store is staring at him, and the fact that he knows they aren’t helps less than it should. He keeps his eyes fixed on Castiel, who is scrubbing down the register, to engrossed in his task to notice Dean approaching.

He looks up when Dean actually reaches the counter. “Fearless!” he says. “You found me! Coffee? Black? Pie?” 

“Cherry,” says Dean. His heart is in his throat.

Castiel taps that into the register. “Alright,” he says, “same as always.”

This time, when Dean hands over his money, he makes sure to turn his wrist upwards, so the yawning expanse of his timer’s empty space is perfectly visible. 

Castiel stills, for a second, as he looks. That superficial frenetic energy of his slows. “Huh,” he says. “That’s … interesting.”

“You wanna drink cocoa with me?” Dean says, then immediately feels himself flushing. What a stupid thing to say, what a stupid way to say it — why cocoa — but Castiel is watching him in a way that does not suggest he’s unhappy. 

“Hm,” says Castiel. Then, “Yes. Of course.”

There is something almost stilted in his voice, but it’s not bad — if anything, it feels like solidity, a little steel to back Castiel’s usually fluid demeanour. 

Castiel rips off a piece of receipt paper and scribbles something on it. He passes it over. It’s not a phone number. It’s an address. “I don’t have a telephone,” Castiel tells him, and Dean almost laughs. Of course he doesn’t. “You can, uh. Seven o’clock. If that works.” 

“It — yeah.” He nods. “Yeah. Seven, that’s good.” 

When Castiel smiles this time, it’s not flippant. It’s just about as serious as Dean has ever seen him. Dean feels his stomach swell up with warmth, the same feeling he gets when he sees couples kissing on television, but _better,_ because this time it’s happening to him. 

Maybe it’s not fated. Maybe the stars don’t care. It still feels like enough. 

“Merry Christmas,” says Castiel, and Dean smiles backs.


End file.
